Ganga Ram and the mockery of life.

Ganga Ram is (was) a washer man. He was a permanent fixture in our house from the past 25 years and before that his parents served us. So the association goes back some forty years.

He was not a person with whom you could have a conversation. He was a man of few words and a waspish temperament. But he was scrupulously honest. In the 25 years that he worked for us I don’t remember a single day when we had any argument over money or clothes. He would come, pull out the drawers, count the clothes, note down the number in a diary and leave. And so it went on.

A few days back, it was raining persistently when Ganga Ram, as usual, made his entrance and got down to the routine of gathering the clothes. He seemed out of breath and looked tired. But nevertheless, he promised that he would get the clothes back the next day.

It was 5:30 in the morning the next day when my mother told me that somebody was at the door asking for me. I got up sulking and cursing and went out. It was Ganga Ram’s nephew. Ganga Ram had not reached his home last night. There was a sudden twitch in my heart. I knew something bad had happened. In the evening my worst fears came true.

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Ganga Ram had died on his way home.

He had a heart attack. He fell down along with his bicycle outside someone’s door. This happened around 8 p.m. It was around 12 in the night that the police was informed by the chowkidar but by then Ganga Ram had already died.

That someone ,outside whose house Ganga Ram fell, had seen him collapse. That someone did not even bother to call 108! That someone has more than three mobile phones with him. That someone is a person who prays every other day. That someone has a wife, children and parents. That someone is of good standing in the society. That someone is you and me. That someone is the society at large.

We are a society in whose temples mind boggling wealth is locked up. We are a society whose leaders have shippenned away lakhs of crores of rupees. We kill and we pray, we loot and we donate to the temples to wash off our sins. We rot from inside and wear addidas on the outside. We attack artists and the news is on the front page. But when a Ganga Ram dies it is forgotten after a few sighs. This is the collective spirit of our society.

Ganga Ram is survived by his wife and three daughters (one of them has cleared class 12th and has won a scholarship of Rs. 25000). What happens to them now?? If only that someone had made the slight effort of calling an ambulance, we wouldn’t have been asking this question.

In our society to be born poor should be declared a crime punishable by death. Let the bill be passed in the parliament and the law be put into effect. Lokpals can come later.

If the poor in our society cannot live and die with dignity of what use is our independence then. Did the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose sacrificed their lives in vain. This is a question which I pose not only to you but to myself also.

How and where does it matter that we have gained independence! We are still slaves of our selfishness, of our petty thinking. A few of us live to consume and millions of us live to die and to be consumed. That is the naked truth of our independence. Our leaders are a projection of our collective conscience. Have you ever seen a pack of vultures being lead by a lion! We as individuals need to change to change as a society or as a nation. I need to change.